Lepanthes pectinata Luer 1986 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Drawing by © Dunsterville and Garay

Common Name The Comb-Like Lepanthes

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Bolivar state of Venezuela in cloud forests at elevations around 900 to 1300 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect to subpendent, slender ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 8, close-fitting, minutely subscabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, more or less suffused with purple, elliptical to suboborbicular, acute, acuminate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early winter on an erect, arising on the top of the leaf, peduncle .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long, rachis .8" [2 cm] long, very congested, distichous, lo0ng-pedicelate, successively single, many flowered inflorescence with subscabrous, half as long as the pedicel floral bracts and carrying flowers with red-brown sepals, orange petals and a red-orange lip.

"This species from eastern Venezuela was identified as the Jamaican L ovalis in the Flora of Venezuela Foldats, and as the Central American L. turialvae in Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated and Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated field Guide 1979. Besides the distinctive habit with acuminate leaves and smaller flowers, the large, segmented, pubescent, appendix easily distinguishes this species from tne other two. The appendix, however, is very similar to that of several apparently unrelated species from Ecuador." Luer 1986

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1970 as L ovalis drawing fide; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 6 Dunsterville & Garay 1966 as L turialvae drawing fide; Orchids of Venezuela An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 2 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 as L turialvae drawing fide; * Phytologia 59: 449 Luer 1986; drawing fide; Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 2 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing fide

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